Week 3

This week in TOG we will be reviewing Islam and the impact that it had during the Middle Ages. History:

Literature:


Church History:

Dictation: We used selections from the story of King Arthur for this week.

Writing: This week our writing assignment was a report about Islam.

Timeline: This week we added Muhammad to our timeline.

Geography: This week our map focuses on the Islamic Empire

Notebook pages: This week we made a mini-book about Islam and we looked at the geometric art of the time.

Project: This week we did this tessellation project. I'll post pictures later.

Art: We checked out the Islamic art hereand took a virtual tour of the Taj Mahal here

Week 2

Our goals this week were to cover the Byzantine Empire, focusing on Justinian, St. Patrick and the monasteries. We also learned about the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches.

History:


Literature:

Movie: This week we added this movie to our studies. It gave a good picture of the Irish monastaries and the legends around St. Patrick. And Danny concluded the movie (that was all about God) by saying, "And that, kids, is why we get drunk every St. Patrick's Day. They were surprised to learn that people celebrate the holiday of St. Patrick in a drunken stupor. :-)

Dictation: This week we are using portions of The Code of Justinian.

Writing: We are writing a descriptive essay about life in a monastary.

Notebook Pages:


Project: We made guilded books. You can download the mini-kit here. (HT:Karen)

(We haven't added the copywork to it yet.)

Evaluation: I was a little frustrated with the upper grammar evaluation this week because we did all the reading, but I didn't find the information that was asked on the Evaluation for Upper Grammar. So, we just did it together orally.

Week 1

Well, here we go again! I'm actually feeling so relieved to get started. I wanted to start a couple weeks ago, but it worked out better for my work schedule to start this week. I especially couldn't wait to get back to Tapestry of Grace!

The goals of this wee are to review the fall of Rome, discuss the Barbarian invasions and review some of the early church history.

History: There are a couple other books, but I couldn't find pictures of them.

Literature:

Church History:

Dictation: This week for dictation we are using The Apostle's Creed because it goes along well with the church history.

Writing: This week the main focus is reviewing the writing process. We won't have an actual writing topic until next week. We will use the Why Study History supplement to do a graphic organizer.

Geography: The kids did the dialectic level maps this week.

Timeline: We will add the figures from Homeschooling in the Woods timeline CD

*Augustine

*Constantine

*Alaric

*Atilla

*Clovis

*Genseric

*Theodoric

*King Arthur

Evaluation: The kids took the Diagnostic test from the Dialectic level on the Evaluations CD

Notebooking Pages: I didn't have any notebooking pages for this week, giving us a little time to ease into our TOG studies.

Fine Arts/Projects: This week we will be making Celtic knots (I will add pictures when we finish them)

In the rest of our studies we completed the work on our year at a glance form. It was a full week and I feel like I am going to have to tighten a few things up to get through all I want to do each week. I kept feeling like we were "behind schedule" even though we did pretty well.

This afternoon we are going to the fair (I'll post pictures later) and that will be a part of our education for the week!

Apologia general science went very well. I wasn't sure how it would go, but I read it out loud and the kids seemed to really like it. They enjoyed the labs that we did. I forgot to take pictures, but I'll do that next time!

More memory song (how to)

For those who asked how I added the song to my blog, I followed the directions here. I already had Movie-maker on my computer, so I didn't even have to download that program.

Memory Song Test

OK, I'm trying something new on the blog. I put some of memorization recommendations in The Well Trained Mind to a tune. I feel the need to apologize for the cheesy lyrics and the poor sound quality. I'm trying to make due with some of the programs my computer already has on it.


Wars of the Middle Ages (tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic)
The Wars of the Middle Ages start with the Crusades
The Muslims and the Christians, the Holy land did raid
They battled for 200 years before they were all done
From 1095 to 1291.

The first ten ninety-six to ninety-nine
A Wild mob surrounded Palestine.
The second in 1187
They thought if they fought they would go to heaven.

In 1191 the Lionheart took the lead
He couldn’t win, but he had them sign a treaty
The 4th Crusade in 1202 to 1204
They looted Constantinople till there was no more!

The tried to send the children in 1212
The Children’s Crusade was not good for their health.
The fifth and 6th didn’t get much done.
And finally in 1291 Egypt won

The Hundred Years War fought with England and France.
They both wanted Kingdoms so they thought they’d take the chance.
The start in 1377 and all the years between
Don’t add up to 100, but 116.

Joan of Arc of Arc, a very young girl
Led the people into battle
Many bloody battles were lost and found
And in the end, neither side had gained much ground.

The Wars of the Roses wasn’t like a flower
The Yorks and the Lancasters both wanted power
From 1455 to 1485
Until a Lancastor took a York for a wife

The final war that we will relate
Went from 1562 to 1598
The Catholics and the Protestants were fighting for the rule.
The French Wars of Religion just weren’t cool!

Yearly Planning for Next Year

I understand that not everyone loves to plan and organize as much as I do, so you will have to bear with me in my extreme "geeky-ness!" I get great joy out of planning and I find our school runs so much more smoothly when I have a plan!

The first thing that I did was to look at next year's calendar and mark out the weeks we would be gone and figure out how I wanted to break up the 36 weeks. I chose 36 weeks because TOG has 36 lessons and even though we technically school year-round, I do try to have a difference between the normal year and our summer work.

The next thing that I have done is to break all my curriculum up into 36 weeks. This I have listed on the chart below. This is the first year that I have done this with all the subjects, and so I know that there will be weeks that we don't get through everything, but I really like to keep moving on our TOG studies so that we can get through the whole curriculum by the time we go on vacation in June. It has worked this year, and knowing that I can't stop has been a great motivator to keep me pushing forward. I have been pleased with how much we did get done. We'll see how it goes with everything pre-scheduled! Whatever we can't finish will be finished in our summer weeks.

The final thing that I am working on is making up my notebooks. Last year I had wonderful sucess with my history notebooks that I am going to make monthly notebooks with the kids daily work. I have been tearing up workbooks and copying pages that we will need, but I think it will be so nice to have everything in one place next year.

The final step is to make my checklist. I don't like working from a strict schedule (meaning from 9-9:30 we do math, etc.) I much prefer having a list where I can make sure we completed everything I wanted to get done that week. I use this page (which I "stole" and modified from Jessica. On this page I write down everything I need to remember to accomplish.

Week 35-TOG

History: The focus of this week was the Coliseum and the gladiators as we approach the end of the Roman empire.


Church History: We read about the catacombs and the persecution of the early church.


Literature:


Dictation: We finished up I Corinthians 13



Writing: We wrote about the Gladiators



Notebooking Pages: We drew a picture of the Coliseum and found pictures of the early Roman catacombs. (pictures coming later)